Teach Clients What to Do — Not How to Do It, with Sam Mallikarjunan

Episode 111:

Sam Mallikarjunan is a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, the somewhat-secret experimental arm of the world’s #1 Sales & Marketing platform. Sam teaches Advanced Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, and he is also the co-author of the book How To Sell Better Than Amazon (which, thanks to the publisher, is ironically available for purchase on Amazon).

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

The way the internet has changed selling so that there’s almost too much information

How salespeople can help consumers sift through the breadth of information out there

Structuring sales calls so they’re all about asking the buyers questions about their business

The power of inbound: competition where no one else is competing

Learning to say no to bad revenue

Why you need to build buyer personas — both for your ideal customers and customers that you don’t want to do business with because they’re going to cost you money

Why clients need agencies to teach them what to do — not how to do it

Getting involved with your client’s complete business — including the sales side of their business

How to get your clients to treat your agency like a partner instead of a vendor

For almost 30 years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies and then started his own (which he still owns and run) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads Agency Management Institute, which advises hundred of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more.